


Rewrite the Narrative

by DilynAliceBlake



Series: Let It Be Enough [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, FUCK, Grief, M/M, Sad, Soulmates, Sucide, duel, idk - Freeform, supernatural and magical elements, the schuyler sisters are too good for alexander's bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-15 22:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7241314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DilynAliceBlake/pseuds/DilynAliceBlake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexander Hamilton kills Aaron Burr in the duel.  Then he's sad about it.  Really fuckin sad.  The kind of sad that leads to making inadvisable deals with shady characters to go back and change the outcome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Alexander Hamilton kills Aaron Burr at Weehawken, the rising sun tinting the world a pale and sickly yellow-orange.  The regret lances through him, guilt buzzing through his every cell, and he can’t understand why it _hurts_ the way it does.  After that day, he cannot bring himself to write another word.  Through the dreamlike fugue of alcohol, he wonders why as he re-reads their correspondence again.

Eliza looks at him with pity like he’s never seen, and even Phillip comes down from the high of his first won duel, fretting over him like no child should have to over a parent.

It isn’t until days later, when Angelica is on his family’s doorstep looking irritated at more than just the rain, than Alexander realizes he hasn’t been replying to her letters.  Hasn’t even opened her recent letters.  _Didn't even know she was in the country._

Angelica doesn’t pour all of his whisky out the second floor window, but it’s a near thing.  The next day he barely notices the pain of his hangover; piled as it is on top of the weight of what’s happened.  The ache in his head has nothing on the ache in his heart.

His wife and sister-in-law confront him after dinner, obviously barely managing to refrain during the meal that he pushes around his plate without eating.  The children are on a visit to their Aunt Peggy’s, and the room is tense.

“Alexander, what’s wrong?  I’ve never seen you like this!”  Eliza twists a napkin in her hands nervously, but Angelica’s sharp eyes stay scrutinizing him with laser focus, and she hardly moves to breathe.

He doesn’t reply, Burr’s bleeding form flashing behind his eyelids as he blinks.  _Talk less_ , he remembers hysterically, and shakes his head, giving a wobbly smile as tears streak down his cheeks.  He’s so silent his breath doesn’t even hitch.

Alexander isn’t sure how they can ask what’s wrong, as if it isn’t obvious that the entire world should have come crashing down the minute Aaron’s heart stopped beating.

Angelica’s mind is quick as ever, and although Alexander’s silence she’s observed has been nothing but haunting, she doesn’t let it affect her cool reasoning.

“Alexander, would you mind describing to me the first time you ever met Aaron Burr?”

At the question there is a sharp intake of breath, a real reaction at last.  Angelica is not so crass as to count Hamilton’s pain as a victory.

Alexander wishes there were more than water in his wine glass.  ( _Alexander wishes he had aimed his pistol at the sky._ )

Suddenly he has found his words again.  The people who had called him uncontrolled before, had said he had no filter; could they hear them now they would no doubt apologize for their gross misjudgment.  Alexander’s words are a storm with Aaron Burr as its point of rotation.  Alexander Hamilton is a hurricane, and without Aaron Burr to act as his eye he is veering out of control.

He can hear himself, and understands that his words are indecent, but now that he’s found his focus, understands where the words went, all he can do is hold on with both hands.  Alexander is hyper-aware that without this he will be lost again.

He sees the reactions of the women at the table with him only after the most scandalous of his proclamations, when he has the wherewithal to swim up from his memories and watch their thoughts as they flash across their faces.

“His eyes sparkled,” Alexander’s own voice proclaims, sounding undeniably smitten, while Angelica’s eyebrows begin to creep towards her hairline.

“We had this instant connection; he understood, if not my choices precisely, at least where I was coming from.  He _listened,_ and-” Eliza has taken a fortifying ~~sip~~ gulp of her wine, and based on how pale she is, she needs it.

“-then when I told him I had punched the bursar he looked positively _scandalized_.”

Eliza has stopped fidgeting, and Angelica has started, but that seems far away as Hamilton chuckles at the memory; his first real smile since _it_ happened. 

Since he did what he did.

Somehow the words keep going, past his and Aaron’s first meeting and on to the next, and the next.  He’s detailing their entire lives, bemusedly explaining how they orbited around each other.

“And at the after-party for our wedding, he told me to smile more; he was always telling me to smile more, like I wasn’t pausing to be happy, and maybe I wasn’t-”

Eliza flinches and wonders why that lesson sinks in from Burr’s mouth but not her own.

“For the longest time he refused to voice a single opinion around me, and it wasn’t until I was arguing with him over an edit he had made to one of my writings agreeing that I realized he had been _teasing_ me, the whole entire time!”

Angelica’s lips are pressing more and more tightly together, but Hamilton doesn’t know how to stop, doesn’t even really want to.

“And the first time I saw him in uniform he took my breath away!  He was so confident, so-”

Alexander is past caring how compromising what he’s saying at this point is; he’s already said enough to be damned should someone with a grudge catch wind of it.

“And the way we used to argue over cases, he was always so passive aggressive when he knew I was wrong, always cool as ice, patient, it verged on overwhelming-”

Eliza’s chair screams across the floor, screeching and scratching into the hardwood, but she can’t bring herself to care about the ruined varnish.

Alexander isn’t sure what set her off; which of his sentences has her fuming through her nose.  He keeps talking.

“I didn’t want to _fight_ with him; I endorsed Jefferson so that he would be better next election, stand more firmly, take the country by storm like I knew he could if only he would show off how brilliant he was, instead of how charismatic!  Aaron was-”

Eliza strides out of the room, head held deceptively high, shoulders thrust back stiffly and composure barely kept.  Hamilton keeps talking, faster and faster, more disjointed, jumping around the timeline, pouring cherished memories into the air like they’ll fade if he doesn’t.  Angelica’s hands shake as she finishes her glass of wine, and then two more, but she stays for the entire thing, knowing that he needs her to.

When Alexander’s words finally peter off, and the silence doesn’t seem as oppressive.  He feels like he can breathe without the fortification of a drink.

Angelica doesn’t say anything; perhaps fearful that it might break the atmosphere and send Alexander back on a spiral into his own mind, or into his cups again.

She looks strained, giving a tight nod before quietly rising from her own seat and following her sister’s path out of the room.  Alexander gets a familiar itch in his hand, a desire to write he had thought long gone.  He wants to put to paper the exact shade of Aaron’s eyes; to immortalize him through poetry.

It isn’t anything that will lead to greatness; if anything to write such a thing down would be a risk.  He stands to go find a pen, and now when he blinks he sees Aaron’s soft smile.


	2. Chapter 2

**for those of you who are wondering what the fuck i just wrote and why, i don't know either.  but there's more of it, so.**

 

“Eliza,” Angelica prompts gently.  Her sister’s eyes are puffy, and Angelica wonders whether she was crying for her husband’s loss or her lost husband.  Eliza is kind, so it is prudent to assume both.

“…It hurts, knowing that if it were not a sin then I would have had competition from someone I have so often heard him complain about.  The idea that Alexander’s affections could have been stolen by the very man who took the senate seat from our father…”

Angelica does not wish to be cruel, but she is a realist.

“’Liza, if it weren’t illegal then there _would have not been_ a competition.  Alexander was probably feeling particularly betrayed so often _because_ of his … _feelings_ towards Burr.”

“You’re saying that the only reason he married me was because he couldn’t have _Burr_?”

Put like that it sounds vicious, and Angelica admits that her own feelings may be coloring her interaction with her sister right now, even while in her head she corrects Eliza’s assumption that she is second choice to third.  It feels cold, but within her own mind she allows herself to be petty.  Outwardly, she steels herself to try again at comfort.

Before she can decide what to say, Elizabeth’s voice is questioning, sounding scared of the answer even as she asks.

“Do you think that they-?”

“I think Alexander wanted to.  I think that if Burr hadn’t been who he was, they would have.”

In her mind, she thinks that, persuasive as Alexander can be, they might have anyway.

“You have a lot of thinking to do,” Angelica says, and leaves to do her own crying.

She always knew that she would never have a chance to have Alexander for herself, to herself.  She never even guessed that the part of his heart she had was already second pickings.


	3. Chapter 3

Eliza creeps into the room where Angelica is staying shortly before dawn.  She lays in the bed next to her sister, and knows that neither of them has slept.

“Did you hear what he said?” Eliza whispers.  Angelica raises a single eyebrow.

“I heard more of what he said than _you,_ Eliza.”

“It was hard, feeling for him as I do, as his wife… I couldn’t stay to listen.”

Angelica knows that the jibe against her own feelings toward Alexander is not intentional, knows for herself that she stayed _because_ of how deeply she cared.  That is not an argument she needs to have with Eliza; especially not after the evening they’ve both had.

“He said that Burr was always passive aggressive when he knew Alexander was wrong.”

Angelica waits for more.

“...Before the duel with Burr, Alexander and I were at odds about that damnable pamphlet- …”

A pause, where Angelica knows that Eliza is wondering if her own anger at Alexander made his words towards Burr any harsher; is wondering if somehow she helped to cause that duel, and the hurt that Alexander is now feeling.  Elizabeth wipes a tear away, takes a breath, and continues to her point.

“Alexander never really apologized.  Well, he probably never would have, never will… He’s always so sure of himself.  He almost did, though.  Came as close as he could have, I think.  He told me, ‘I know you think I was wrong.’  I _think_! 

“I only _think_ he is wrong, after he publishes an entire extramarital affair and blackmail scandal to the public, but Burr, when they argued, _knew_ Alexander was wrong.  Made him admit that he was wrong.  I know, out of everything, it’s probably a dumb thing to be jealous of.  But Alexander _listened_.  Do you think, if it had been Burr prompting instead of me, Alexander would have joined us last summer?”

Angelica cannot think that; cannot even think _of_ that, because if Alexander’s affection for Aaron Burr overwhelms what he feels for both Eliza and her, put together, then she will not be able to stop herself from resuming crying.  She must continue to believe that no one, not a single person, has ever been more important to Alexander than his work.

“You’re right.  That’s a stupid thing to be jealous of.  After you left, he talked for six minutes straight about Burr’s eyes.  He enumerated about _crow’s feet._ ”

Then Eliza says “It wasn’t just you he wasn’t writing.  He hasn’t picked up a pen since it happened.  Doesn’t mention work, doesn’t react to articles about Jefferson’s presidency.  He just wanders the house like a ghost.  Before today I hadn’t heard him speak, except to address Burr as if he were there.”

It’s too much, and Angelica starts crying again.  Eliza joins her.


	4. Chapter 4

Alexander writes and he writes and he writes, and it isn’t enough.

Writing has always helped him before, and it occurs to him that if it isn’t helping now, then perhaps he hasn’t done the required reading.  He certainly has enough practical knowledge about his subject, but at this point he is only writing himself into another frenzy, and it isn’t soothing so much as the only thing grounding him to this world.

‘ _This world,’_ Alexander thinks, and stills his pen mid stroke.  Perhaps what he needs are some reference materials about the Other Side.

It’s wild, and preposterous, but with every minute that ticks by it seems less so.  There is a hole torn through him as surely as there was one torn through Burr, and Hamilton thinks that if ever it were desperate enough times for such measures then now is that time.

He starts by scouring book stores in the area, but the type of books he’s looking for are usually kept quiet, and within a very close knit community, so he swallows his pride and goes to the bank.

A safe deposit box holds the things he brought with him from his island home, and he extracts them all and closes it.

He slips a necklace covered in a few odds and ends charms over his head immediately, but waits until he is back home in his study to rub the drops of oil across his wrists.  There remains on his desk from his excursion a bag of more seeming trinkets, and what is unmistakably a book wrapped in brown butchers’ paper and tied with string.

Hamilton shivers.  It feels strange to think about things he hasn’t since he was an adolescent.  Growing up he very firmly put _all_ of his other studies and reading before this, though his mother chided him and told him that he would not be able to escape it forever.

He remembers her accented voice telling him that it was in his blood.  Blood, he knows, is a very powerful thing.

He came to New York determined to be a new man, but this isn’t the time to second guess himself.  (In his head, a shot rings out, and it is _exactly_ the time to second guess himself.)

He carefully removes the butchers’ paper, and takes a deep breath.  Burr was worth this.  **Is** worth this.  _Will be_ worth this, again.


	5. Chapter 5

The smoke curling up from beneath Alexander’s office door does not smell like tobacco or cigarette, or even wood or paper.  Angelica crinkles her nose and eases it open just a crack, then steps sharply back with discomforted surprise.

The Schuylers are a good, churchgoing family.  They attend on Sundays, and though Angelica has never _personally_ seen Alexander Hamilton pray, but she supposes she had always just _assumed_.

Perhaps, if it were just the incense, she would not have drawn her inevitable conclusion.  The trinkets braided into his hair, however, go piled on to the growing list of evidence, right next to the necklace and the strangely colored candles and the _book_ that he’s reading from with all the fervor he usually writes with.  These things, added to the recent death of someone whom Alexander undeniably loved, make witchcraft an undeniable suspect.

These are not _clues_ ; they are practically signed admissions of guilt.

She laughs harshly at her own unintentional joke, because Alexander is making a habit of signed admissions of guilt, these days.

He freezes in the middle of turning a page, somehow having heard her from wherever it is he goes when lost in his head.  To her surprise, he comes to pull the door the rest of the way open, silently inviting her in before returning to his seat at the desk.

Angelica does not sit.  She feels distanced from the man across from her, as if perhaps after all this time he is just a stranger in familiar skin.  Angelica falls back on a formal distance they haven’t had in over a decade; perhaps never even shared.

“You could be hung for this,” Angelica says, because that seems like the easiest place to start.

Alexander is unimpressed.

“There are a great many things that I could, and likely _should_ be hung for.  A witch trial is the least of my worries.

“...Would you like to know what I’m doing?” Hamilton asks considerately.  Angelica is surprised to find that for once in her life, she does not feel curious in the least about something unknown to her.

“ _No_ ,” she states firmly, and means it.  Alexander shrugs and ignores her to turn more pages, scribbling notes on the sheet next to him.

Whether or not she wants insight into what he’s doing, Angelica finds that being ignored by _any_ Hamilton, one she knows or _not_ , still stings.  She leaves the office door open out of spite as she leaves, knowing that Hamilton will be too absorbed in whatever that is that he’s reading is to think to close it.

She finds Eliza in the garden.

“Your husband,” Angelica states, with all the matter-of-fact composure of someone completely unbothered, “has turned to the devil in his grief.”

“What do you-” Elizabeth’s question is cut off by a terrified scream from one of the serving staff.

When Eliza rushes to investigate, Angelica follows at a more sedate pace.  She doubts Alexander has stopped reading to notice whatever poor soul has no doubt fainted outside his office door.


	6. Chapter 6

Eliza is pale as chalk when she reaches Alexander’s office to see him sketching strange symbols onto blank paper in what she can only hope is ink.

“What are you doing Alexander?”  There is disbelief in her voice because she doesn’t _want_ to believe.

“I’m fixing this.  You need to understand, Eliza, what I did was… I have to fix it, if I can.”

“I wonder,” and she really does, “would you do this for me if I were in his place?”

“That’s ridiculous, Eliza.  You’re my wife!  I would never shoot you.”  It is an answer, but not to the question Eliza asked.  Not directly, at least.

“I’m going on another visit to my father.  This time, Husband, you aren’t invited.”

“I only regret,” he responds softly, “that you can’t understand why I’m doing this.”

“Alexander, believe me; I _do_.”

Watching Eliza disappear down the hallway to pack, Angelica knows that it is time to choose a side.

“My sister is right, Hamilton.”

He glances, just for an instant, up from his sketch.

“I’ll be burning the letters you wrote me.  Please refrain from sending more.”

He swallows, but nods.  This is not the best Alexander could have hoped for, but if it’s for Aaron… Any cost will be worth it.

 

**i know y'all are probably eager to see what exactly it is he is up to, and i promise you'll see soon.  v soon.  this is, for obvious reasons, the last chapter with the schuyler sisters for a while.  poor alexander, he's really having a tough time of it.  not handling his grief well, i would say.**


	7. Chapter 7

**a/n: here is the angst i promised.  don't worry; it gets worse >:)**

Aaron felt the bullet tear through him… unable, even at his last stand, to take a stand, maybe Alexander was right… but no, he could never shoot Alexander, doesn’t know why, even as he’s bleeding out on the verdant grass, he ever thought he could.  Maybe throwing away his shot _was_ his stand, his last act of kindness, friendship, …love.  He’s always tried to protect Hamilton, always wanted him happy.  He doesn’t regret this.  Of course the punk would have to do something to ruin his noble sacrifice, he thinks.  Of course he would have to step in and upstage him.  Of course, even in the bond they share, Hamilton would make the more grand gesture.

At first, when Aaron is again standing across from Alexander, unharmed, he thinks that it is some sort of test.  Maybe he’ll have to relive his death a few times, to learn some sort of lesson.  Then, when he goes to again aim his gun at the sky, he finds he can’t move.

Everything around him, he suddenly notices, is frozen.  An apparition wobbles in and out of his sight, solidifying into Alexander.

It’s undeniably him, but it isn’t like Burr has ever seen him.  He looks more stressed than on his worst days, sleep deprived and high strung.  He’s wearing quite a bit of jewelry, and privately Burr likes how the bracelets draw attention to his delicate wrists.

Suddenly there is another form across from Alexander, one that Burr cannot bring himself to look at directly.  He can’t hear it either, but it must ask something, because Alexander answers.

“I want to fix what happened,” Alexander presents in his most convincing ‘lawyer’ voice.

Burr’s blood turns to ice; he’s suddenly colder than when he was bleeding out on the ground.

“No, Alexander!” he tries to yell.  It doesn’t work.  He can’t move, as frozen as everything else.  Everything except the bargaining pair across from him.

He isn’t stupid, has heard enough from his grandfather about unholy deals having unspeakable costs.  He is not worth Alexander’s soul.

“No dammit!  Alexander!”  His yells remain unvoiced as the _thing_ across from Alexander says something that makes him go pale, but he nods.

Aaron wonders what he’s throwing away for him.                   

“I’ll take his place.  Give him the rest of my time, if we can’t both live.”

Burr wants to scream.

“I- What?”  Suddenly Alexander is looking at Aaron like he’s the most wondrous thing he’s ever seen, and now only gets to watch him slip away.

“Soulmates?”

 _‘Fuck,_ ’ Aaron thinks, having given up on talking.  Alexander’s words, as they reach him, hurt in a way he wasn’t aware words could, even after years of watching the whirlwind of a man.

If he had control of his body right now he would surely be crying, because he knew he loved Alexander; but if the deal Alexander is making right now, if the way Alexander is looking at him right now, if any of it means anything… They’ve both missed their chance.

Then suddenly the apparition Alexander is approaching him, touching his cheek gently, leaning into his space to whisper.

“I hope you would forgive me this one liberty,” Alexander begs of him, and Aaron wants to shout in his face that he’s aware of what’s happening, to demand Alexander not do this.

Mostly though, he wants to kiss Alex back.

One kiss, and he knows it’s all he’ll ever get.

The bastard.

Alexander pulls away, and nods back to the creature.

“I’m ready,” he says.

‘ _I’m not,_ ’ Burr thinks.

Then the other Hamilton is gone, and control returns to him.  He screams “ _ **Wait!**_ ” but it really is too late.  His hand is firing the gun without his permission, and there across the field Alexander's shirt begins blooming red.


	8. Chapter 8

**a/n: alright, this chapter to Wr3n, who left a lot of amazing and inspired comments.  also, for those wondering about all that other angst, i've relegated it to it's own story, accidentally.  which i haven't written yet, but definitely will, because it's sad.**

 

Hamilton’s original plan is to trade his soul so that he can throw away his shot instead of shooting Burr, but apparently you can’t bargain your soul to save its mate.

He would probably be more upset about his Plan A falling through, but he had a few backups.  Ideally, he and Burr would both have lived, Aaron never the wiser to either his feelings or the fact that he shot/saved him in the first place.

Plan B, the rest of his life so Burr can live, is sad but more than fair.  He can’t resist one single kiss, before saying goodbye.

He can’t move on, or whatever, until Burr dies, so he’s mostly just hanging out in Limbo reminiscing about his life, when Aaron shows up.

He looks a little worse for the wear, hair speckled with some gray, but it can’t have been more than a year since the duel.

Despite himself, Alexander is pissed.

“What the hell, Burr?”

“Alexander.  Your son is a surprisingly good shot.”

Okay, Hamilton is admittedly a little proud at that, but mostly he’s still upset.

“Why are you here already?”

“Well, considering the deal you made, I would assume it’s because the rest of your life wasn’t as long as you’d assumed, going into the agreement.”

“No, this isn’t- Wait, what?”

“I _said_ -”

“No, no.  I know what you said.  How did you know about that?”

Burr gives him an inscrutable look.

“I was there for it.  Couldn’t hear what the other guy said, but-”

Alexander lets out an embarrassing squeak that might be Burr’s name.

“You _were_?  How aware?  Could you hear me, or see, or-”

“See, hear, _feel,”_ Burr adds an unusual emphasis.  “The whole shebang.”

“ _Oh_.”  Alexander sounds small.

“Yes, ‘Oh.’  Now that I have your attention, I have a thing or two I’d like to discuss.”  Aaron sounds irritated, and Alexander is very nervous.  Can he be killed if he’s already dead?  Would Burr kill him?  Technically, he already had, but that hadn’t exactly been his doing…

“Alexander, your attention?”

“Right.”  Alexander clears his throat.  “Right.”

Burr strides up to him, fists clenched.

“You absolute _bastard_!”  He rears back and slaps Alexander.

“You had no right, Alexander, _none_ , to throw your life away for me!  I made my choice knowing full well the possible consequences.  I _died_ so that you could live, you can’t just take that away from me!  Did it ever occur to you that perhaps I refused to shoot you for a _reason_ Alexander?  That maybe the weight of your death wasn’t something I wanted on my conscience?”

“Why do you think it was any different for me?” Alexander demands.

“Maybe if you didn’t want to live with killing me, you shouldn’t have _done it!_ ”

Hamilton flinches at the flung words like he hadn’t at the strike.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, eyes on the blackness that he assumes is the ground.  Everything is blank, void, except for Aaron in front of him.

“And another thing!  Where do you get off, confessing your love and kissing me when I couldn’t do anything about it?”

Alex swallows, guilt suddenly pounding through him twice as hard.

“I didn’t know you were _aware_ for it!”

“ _IF **ANYTHING** THAT MAKES IT **WORSE**!!_ ”

A choked sort of sob escapes Alexander, and he begins crying, the weight of his wrongdoing too much.

“Sorry, I’m so sorry, I-”

A thumb wipes a tear away, and Alexander looks up before he can help it.  If his heart still beat, it would freeze at the tender look Aaron is giving him now.

“Why did you wait until after I was dead to say something, Alexander?  Do you have any idea how frustrating it was, not to be able to kiss you back?  To watch you dying, across that field, knowing that our chance was gone?”

“ _Huh?_ ”  Alexander is terribly lost, and not completely convinced he understands what Aaron is saying.  If it is what it sounds like, then it would mean that Aaron isn’t angry because of how Alexander feels, he’s angry at Alexander’s timing.

“Finally speechless, Alexander?” Burr teases.

Hamilton would argue, would find his tongue to say something clever in response, but before he can, _Burr_ finds his tongue, with his own. Limbo turns to bliss.

“Time to go, guys.”

It’s John Laurens, sounding amused at having caught them mid make-out.

“Go?” Alexander asks, curious.

“Of course.”  Laurens rolls his eyes.  “Your parents are waiting.  Probably arguing over whether posthumously getting together counts, to figure out who won the betting circle.”

Suddenly there is a path, a brightly lit house in the distance.  Neither have seen it before; there is nothing like it on earth.  They know it is home, and start walking hand in hand.  On the way there, John Laurens teases Hamilton about having originally died of a broken heart.  Now, with his love finally at his side, Alexander can smile.


End file.
